


On Boxes and Labels

by InksandPens



Category: Animator vs. Animation (Short Film 2006)
Genre: Character Analysis, Victim in a box what will he do, he'll make Chosen reevaluate his own thought processes that's what, rather oblique discussions of trauma, talking about your angsty backstory like you just tripped over a rug on your way to the pastry table
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-13 19:41:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29034096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InksandPens/pseuds/InksandPens
Summary: The boxes are real. The lables are slightly more abstract.
Kudos: 16





	On Boxes and Labels

**Author's Note:**

> Victim's fleece pajamas are inspired by the wonderful ilikemarshmallows. You can see Victim in fleece pajamas on her tumblr at https://ilikemarshmallows.tumblr.com/post/640959684883480576/outfit-requests-from-the-discord-this-was-so-much

“ _Safe_?”

Victim smiled. “Yeah. It’s sturdy, I can fit my whole self inside if I scrunch up a bit, it creaks when I move, and with a few blankets and a pillow it can be really cozy.”

“Cozy.”

“Plus if I bring my headlamp in with me I can shine it around inside and remind myself that I’m not lost anymore. I don’t always do that, though, sometimes I’m fine with just leaving the lid open and stretching out a bit. It’s still pretty comfy.” He pulled his legs up and stuck them out over the edge, wiggling his feet for emphasis. “You look confused. Hey, don’t knock it ‘till you try it.” Victim paused, frowning briefly, before knocking the side of the chest twice with a suppressed giggle, an impish smirk flickering across his face.

“It’s not that I haven’t...”

Victim refocused. “Oh, you have? Been in one before?”

Chosen didn’t grimace exactly, but his blank expression sort of tightened around his eyes and mouth.

They were on the remodeled sticksfight.com page. Chosen had noticed a Minecraft-style chest in the living room that he hadn’t recalled being there earlier, and had moved closer to investigate. Someone had fixed a stickynote reading _please knock_ to the lid, so he had. Great was his perplexity when the sham-wooden box opened itself to reveal the oldest-newest member of their little group.

Victim was quite a sight, clad in fleece pajamas with a cave flashlight wrapped securely around his forehead. Accompanying him were at least two pillows, an indeterminable number of blankets, a book, and a thermos, probably full of some hot, sweet drink. Also _he had crammed himself into a chest._

“You don’t _have_ to stay in there,” Chosen had assured, but Victim had said he wanted to, which had led to Chosen asking him why, because _really_ , which had led to their current conversation.

“Oh,” Victim breathed. “I, um, I take it your experience was different?”

“Markedly.”

Victim squirmed, thumbing the edge of one sleeve. “…do I get to know how?”

Chosen settled on the floor with a light snort. How to explain to someone who found comfort in constrictive spaces that the very idea put him in the mind of traps and cages?

Victim could pack himself away in a crate whenever he wished. He could emerge whenever he wanted.

Chosen hadn’t been given a choice. And even though so much time had passed since then, and so much had changed, his life had changed, _people_ had changed, that aversion had never completely disappeared.

How could he explain?

He considered the stick across from him.

Then again, Victim was in a rather unique position to understand _why_ Chosen’s opinions on the value of a chest might differ so greatly from his own.

“It was noogai.”

“Aaaah.” Dawning understanding, a slow, comprehensive nod.

Chosen had been correct.

A lot of things that he wasn’t sure how to say could just be inferred from the fact that noogai had been involved.

Victim’s voice pierced his thoughts. “Can I ask you a question about names?”

Chosen stalled briefly, letting the subject change circle around his head. “Go ahead.”

“Okay, so,” Victim shifted, sitting up higher in his box, releasing his arms from confinement to better articulate. “Like, Dark has multiple names for everyone, right? And he’s the only one that uses those names for those people, but you still all know who he’s talking about.”

Chosen nodded.

“And then,” Victim continued, “sometimes Dark will call Orange by the name Second, but that’s different, I think, because he doesn’t just use that name interchangeably. Dark only really calls him Second when he’s talking about Orange’s powers.”

Chosen revisited past conversations in his head, and realized that Victim has a point. “I’d never noticed,” he mused.

“The first time he was called Second,” Victim went on, “I just accepted that some of you had a different name for him, but once I heard Dark’s names for everyone I realized, calling him Second is different. It’s...it’s not the same as when Dark calls him Power Punch, that’s...that’s _Dark’s_ name for him, but the name Second is just...” Victim frowned, biting his lip as he struggled to explain his thoughts. “It’s only a name for one part of who he is.”

Victim had been squinting into space while he talked, almost as if hoping the words he needed would manifest in front of him as a simple script he could read. But now, he met Chosen’s eyes with a strange timidity. “I...I think you do something similar whenever you talk about...our animator.”

 _Our_ animator. Not _the_ animator.

Chosen had long been aware, of course, that the host of alanspc wasn’t the only animator in existence. But even so, he’d been the only one that mattered. Victim’s use of the possessive made him feel strangely.

“How do you mean?”

Victim shifted. “You call him Alan whenever you’re discussing him in the present, but anytime your past with him gets brought up you switch to calling him noogai. And...and I was just wondering if it’s like with Second, where it’s just...you have two names for two different aspects of him?”

Chosen observed Victim’s unease, vaguely wondering what had incurred it. He’d seemed perfectly comfortable until he’d brought up noogai. Alan. The animator. Usually he had no reservations about discussing their shared creator.

Then again, Chosen couldn’t remember Victim ever discussing said creator outside of his influence on Victim himself.

He rested a hand on Victim’s, where it gripped the side of the crate. He felt some of the tension dissipate from the other stick. Good.

“You’re asking someone who was completely unaware until you said anything.”

That startled a breathy chuckle out of Victim. “But you do see what I’m talking about?”

“I do.” And he did, but _why_ was the question. “Before…I’d seen him use ‘Alan’ and variations thereupon as a name during my time with him, but…it was never ‘ _my name for him_ ,’ as you might put it. I don’t know why I felt that way…”

He quieted, for a moment, sorting through memories. “Honestly ‘noogai’ never felt like ‘ _my name for him_ ’ either. I didn’t start calling him by that moniker until I’d already heard Dark use it countless times…I’m pretty sure that was one of his little ways of being irreverent, and it grew on me after a while.”

He felt the ghost of a sardonic smirk in his cheeks. Irreverence. He couldn’t call the thought a realization, because a part of him had always suspected, but he’d never categorized it in such plain terms before. “Eventually calling him ‘noogai’ felt natural enough. And I didn’t start calling him ‘Alan’ until after I’d spent quite a bit of time with Second and the others, but now that feels natural too.”

“I suppose,” he mused, more to himself than to Victim, “my conception of who- ‘ _the animator_ ’ was as a person changed over time, and different names seemed to fit the new images more. So…maybe not different aspects of him, but my own understanding of him. Though I suppose the old associations do carry over sometimes.”

Victim nodded. He then opened his mouth, shut it again, pursed his lips, furrowed his brow, and shook his head, smoothing his features and turning away.

“Say it,” Chosen prompted.

Victim sighed. “I was just thinking, if it’s your understanding of the whole person, and not specific aspects of the person, then…you never use the name Orange for Second, I’ve noticed. I-I didn’t wanna think you only see him as his powers, because that doesn’t seem like you, but- I wasn’t sure what else…but, but this makes sense.”

Ah. Better emphatically dispel that notion. “He’s definitely more than his powers, although I will admit, those powers did play a big part in the first impression I had of him.” Not the only part, though. “‘Second’ is part of his title, though. Formal address.” His first impression had garnered a lot of respect from the black stick, a respect that only deepened with time; it felt proper. “‘Orange’ is the name everyone has for him. Like the names Dark assigns, but…free for anyone to use.”

Victim nodded again, looking relieved.

“Maybe you could bring this up with Dark,” Chosen added, as an afterthought. “Knowing him, your first guess about his use of…Orange’s title might be right on the mark.”

“I’ll have to ask him later,” Victim mused, snuggling further down into his container. “Not now though, I’m still reading this.” He let go of the side of the chest, giving Chosen’s hand a gentle squeeze. “I promise I’m okay. I like it in here. If it makes you feel better you can leave the lid open, though.” Then his drifting attention seemed to snap back to his conversation partner. “Oh, but I’m not saying you have to leave, like, right now, you can stay if you want.”

Chosen didn’t bother to fight down the smile as Victim stumbled over his words in his haste to assure his welcome, eyes wide with sincerity. “I’ll get my own book and meet you back here.”

He didn’t glance back as he left the room, but his thought nonetheless revolved around the newest-oldest stick.

Yes, to someone who had spent nearly two decades in the void, tactile walls would be highly appreciated. Perhaps even the need to concede to their dimensions would be regarded as a luxury. Just because Chosen didn’t share the sentiment didn’t mean he couldn’t understand.

It was a little ironic, he supposed, that two such vastly different preferences arose from the meddling effects of the same creator.

The animator. Noogai. Alan.

Such vastly different people, and yet, all one man. But he’d changed, and Chosen’s perception of him had changed, and so Chosen’s name for him had changed.

He didn’t really think of noogai and Alan as different people. Just…different stages. If calling those stages by specific names helped him maintain clarity in his own head, that was all there was to it.

He pulled a random book from his collection and made his way back to the living room.

**Author's Note:**

> So one day I noticed that I use the name "noogai" whenever I'm talking about the animator pre-AvA4 and the name "Alan" whenever I'm talking about the animator post-AvA4 and I thought "hey I know which character I can project this dissonance onto."


End file.
